Editor: In response to the letter in last week’s Outlook, Homes to replace forest, I make the following observations:
1. There has never been an officially designated area of undeveloped land in Canmore named Larch Park. Go to the Civic Centre and check the land designation maps. I count five references to such a place in the letter, so I believe this is an unfortunate case of “if an untrue statement is made enough times, some begin to believe it is so.” How unfortunate.
2. The so called ODCL (old daycare lands) had been previously zoned as Municipal Reserve Lands. In this context, the meaning of reserve refers to lands being retained for other future uses. In this case, housing was one of the potential uses defined in the MR zoning.
3. This council was elected with their first priority being to provide affordable housing for our growing community. The process they must follow is clearly defined in the Alberta Municipal Act. That is the rule book here, and for all municipal governments, big or small in our province. To my knowledge they have done so in the process of re-zoning these lands.
4. Finally, is it possible that the place in which the letter writer (or any of us other citizens of Canmore for that matter) reside was to some extent treed and they were removed before a residence was built? Hmm, something worth pondering.
Maybe our Canmore forefathers should have enacted a by-law prohibiting further development/building on town lands upon closure of the mines. Ooops, that would have been sideways of the rule book. It would, however, have avoided all this fuss over nothing.
Hugh Hancock,
Canmore
